ON THIS DAY

... DE­CEM­BER 7

1925 - Swim­mer Johnny Weiss­muller set a world record in the 150-yard freestyle with a time of 1 minute, 25 and 2/5 sec­onds. He went on to play ‘Tarzan’ in sev­eral movies. 1926 - The gas oper­ated re­frig­er­a­tor was patented by The Elec­trolux Servel Cor­po­ra­tion.

1941 - Pearl Har­bor, lo­cated on the Hawai­ian is­land of Oahu was at­tacked by nearly 200 Ja­panese war­planes. The at­tack re­sulted in the US en­ter­ing into World War II.

1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Ho­tel in At­lanta killed 119 peo­ple. It was Amer­ica's worst ho­tel fire dis­as­ter. The ho­tel founder, W. Frank Winecoff, was also killed in the fire. 1971 - Libya an­nounced the na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of Bri­tish Pe­tro­leum's as­sets. 1972 - Apollo 17 was launched at Cape Canaveral. It was the last US moon mis­sion.

1972 - Imelda Mar­cos, wife of Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand E. Mar­cos, was stabbed and se­ri­ously wounded by an as­sailant. The man was then shot and killed by her body­guards. 1974 - Pres­i­dent Makar­ios re­turned to Cyprus after five months in ex­ile.

1980 - Gen­eral An­to­nio Ramlho Eanes was re­elected pres­i­dent of Por­tu­gal. His right-wing op­po­si­tion was thrown into dis­ar­ray by the death of Premier Fran­cisco Sa Carneiro in a plane crash.

1982 - Char­lie Brooks Ju­nior, a con­victed mur­derer, be­came the first pris­oner in the US to be ex­e­cuted by in­jec­tion, at a prison in Huntsville, TX.

1983 - Madrid, Spain, an Avi­aco DC-9 col­lided on a run­way with an Ibe­ria Air Lines Boe­ing 727 that was ac­cel­er­at­ing for take­off. The col­li­sion re­sulted in the death of all 42 peo­ple aboard the DC-9 and 51 on the Ibe­ria jet.

1987 - Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gor­bachev set foot on Amer­i­can soil for the first time. He had come to the US for a Wash­ing­ton sum­mit with U.S. Pres­i­dent Rea­gan.

1987 - 43 peo­ple were killed when a gun­man opened fire on a fel­low pas­sen­ger and the two pi­lots aboard a Pa­cific South­west Air­lines jet­liner.

1988 - An es­ti­mated 25 000 peo­ple were killed when a ma­jor earth­quake hit north­ern Ar­me­nia in the Soviet Union. The quake mea­sured 6.9 on the Richter Scale.